Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Eli is famous for finding simple solutions to complex problems, although also aware that while every complex problem has a simple solution it is often wrong. Be that as it may, the recent post about indoor air pollution pointed out that the problem, and it is a big one, is not the cooking stove, but the exhaust, better put the lack of it, because it is real hard to ween anyone away from their accustomed way of fooding and because of that, introduction of fancy dancy cooking stoves has not worked. Worse, although many are burning shit (dried shit, but shit none the less) or dead plants, and these are not ideal fuels, they are cheap fuels and there is no hope of weaning the poor away from them as long as they are poor.

Now the moral of the tale here is that Eli is perturbed, nay angry, that the following simple solution occurred to the bunny when egged on by Tom Fuller. Angry? Well it means that Eli can no longer think of Tom as useless, but here it is. Tom ended a comment with

Your argument about the ventilation being the problem rather than the cooking is true, but really reminds me of what a SF comedian used to say--'Guns don't kill people. It's those darn bullets.'

To which Eli replied off the tip of his ears

For venting, even a small fan run off solar electricity in the wall near the cooker could make a significant contribution.

But this is not such a bad solution, because moving the effluvia out of the house, while it would not completely solve the problem, would certainly minimize it and save much health and lives. So, of course, there is always the google and the google found a solution, a small exhaust fan with an integrated solar cell panel that could easily be put into just about any house or hovel. Turns out, and on reflection, no surprise, that such things are made for RVs. Still probably too expensive, this one is $25.67, but in large quantities, maybe not made so well, it looks like it could make a difference.

Put a simple screen filter on it and it would be even better. The fan units are designed to be mounted on RV roofs, on top of plumbing vents and come with a one year guarantee. Just the sort of thing that people could donate to organizations like Heifer International or Oxfam or the Gates Foundation could buy by the millions.

13 comments:

Is Eli suggesting that he is prepared to expose the innocent to the existential threat of not completely solving the problem of indoor exposure to pneumotoxic and carcinogenic combustion and thermal decomposition products from vegetable matter exposed to heat?

Is he suggesting people should be voluntarily allowed to congregate in such places , and even , gasp, work there ?

Such flagrant unsciencyness must be outed and punished, lest its scariness lead to overcrowded safe spaces and give former vice presidents the vapors.

One needn't necessarily go for the expensive RV option. My own composting toilet uses a simple computer fan as a standard component, and they can be bought new for as little as $7, and probably less. And there are generations of old boxes kicking around the world - I'm sure that African ingenuity could easily adapt these to provide some utility in this area.

I don't know how much air those shift but would it be enough to keep up with smoke production? A flue would be better as it would prevent most of the smoke from ever mixing with the air in the first place.

Problem is, in the humid tropics some smoke is necessary to keep the roof from rotting away. They learned that the hard way when good people gave them chimneys. Maybe the easiest solution is to teach people to keep the babies away from smoke.

Yes, you do need to add a battery. Not just for late and early cooking, but for many places where in-house open fires are used for heating on cold nights. Hill tribes in Thailand, for instance, have to contend with nighttime temps in the 30s and 40s F.

However, you can find by Googling instructables and such building such fans for less than $10. There's no reason a simple all-in-one solution couldn't be made for $10 or less. I'd suspect much less.

Okay. (Fuller again.) Start a foundation, club, weblog to increase dissemination of fans for ventilation to 167 million rural families in India, as well as many millions more in other parts of the world.

I will support it in any way I can. I will contribute money. I will evangelize. I will contact all my former clients in the high tech industry, many of whom are Asian. I will beat every climate blogger over the head until they come out in strong support of it.

For a variety of reasons I cannot spearhead such an initiative. But I will support it.

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Eli Rabett

Eli Rabett, a not quite failed professorial techno-bunny who finally handed in the keys and retired from his wanna be research university. The students continue to be naive but great people and the administrators continue to vary day-to-day between homicidal and delusional without Eli's help. Eli notices from recent political developments that this behavior is not limited to administrators. His colleagues retain their curious inability to see the holes that they dig for themselves. Prof. Rabett is thankful that they, or at least some of them occasionally heeded his pointing out the implications of the various enthusiasms that rattle around the department and school. Ms. Rabett is thankful that Prof. Rabett occasionally heeds her pointing out that he is nuts.